


A Blue So Loud

by tuesday



Category: Original Work
Genre: Aliens, Gen, Horror, Murder, Science Fiction, Storytelling, Survival Horror, Trick or Treat: Trick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-07-18 23:34:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16129004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tuesday/pseuds/tuesday
Summary: This is the truth: I didn't know it was a ship.  It looked like a castle built into a mountain, perched there at the edge of a sea with plains all around.  I was curious.  I was exploring.  When it left, I didn't expect it to take me, too.The words were on the lips of every member of the crew: they shouldn't have stopped at the Blue Death.  Everyone knew the planet was cursed.  Everyone who'd read the codex notes for local space knew it was a dying world.  Everyone who'd ever told scary stories during ship's night—the lights gone dark to stimulate restful sleep and restless imaginations—curled up with a litter-mate in an absent parent's bunk and repeating the lore too terrifying to be written down knew that the world brought death to all who dared to trespass it.(It was true: it had brought their Captain-Mother death, and the crew carried it with them with every empty corner turned and each dead body found.)





	A Blue So Loud

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lunarium](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lunarium/gifts).



> See end for content notes.

_This is the truth: I didn't know it was a ship. It looked like a castle built into a mountain, perched there at the edge of a sea with plains all around. I was curious. I was exploring. When it left, I didn't expect it to take me, too._

 

The words were on the lips of every member of the crew: they shouldn't have stopped at the Blue Death. Everyone knew the planet was cursed. Everyone who'd read the codex notes for local space knew it was a dying world. Everyone who'd ever told scary stories during ship's night—the lights gone dark to stimulate restful sleep and restless imaginations—curled up with a litter-mate in an absent parent's bunk and repeating the lore too terrifying to be written down knew that the world brought death to all who dared to trespass it.

(It was true: it had brought their Captain-Mother death, and the crew carried it with them with every empty corner turned and each dead body found.)

It was pretty enough for a Class Z-X planet. Its transitions from night to day and day to night cycles were brief, but brilliant panoplies of color. Its ocean glittered with blues as varied as the sky it sometimes reflected. It was warm, and one could explore by land or water without need for breathing tanks or protective gear. On the face of it, it was welcoming, nothing like the volcanic wasteland that had come of First Home or the gas giant they'd passed near a while back where they could siphon materials for the ship but never disembark. It wasn't even like the distantly fled new homeworld of the Enemy, full up with a people so angry, so hateful, that they'd break off from their ancestors and annihilate all who didn't fall in line.

The Blue Death was different. It was beautiful, but it was a planet of monsters.

 

_This is the truth: I didn't know it was a home. There were endless empty corridors. There were rooms that looked like labs. There were what looked like the butchered bodies of strange animals lying on flat slabs. Some of them were moving, bodies shifting in strangely rhythmic motions almost like a parody of their death throes._

_(Almost like they were struggling to breathe until that final, shuddering stop.)_

 

As first broodling of the deceased Captain-Mother's first litter, the majority of the crew took up the cry for A'seth to become Captain-Sister. This was less a vote of confidence in her maturity, confidence, and clarity of judgment and more a consequence of this fact: everyone was scared. No one wanted responsibility for a ship that bled and a crew made up mostly of ghosts and the dead. No one wanted the weight of the 47 souls who yet survived on their conscience. It was bad enough to be first of a once-large litter and know their loss was tied inextricably to your own failure to protect them. A'seth certainly didn't want it. She just wanted to hide in bed and hope someone else took care of the problem.

She had no choice in the matter. A clear chorus rose up. Her name was on the tongue of every voice that did not cry out despair. Tendrils quivering, tenor wavering, A'seth glided slowly out of her room despite the urge to dive back in and hide in the crevice by her bunk. Her duty was clear: first, she must check the injured. First, she must investigate why the hospitals had all gone silent.

 

_This is the truth: I didn't know they were children. I didn't know._

 

She knew the truth—they all knew the truth since the moment the last adult voice had stopped—but knowing and being forced to acknowledge were two entirely separate tunes. Only meat adorned the hospital beds now. What the Enemy had begun, another enemy had completed. They were alone now. _She_ was alone.

They were alone, but there was something here, some discordant note, that walked with them, that stalked them in the half-light that heralded ship's dawn.

A'seth was Captain-Sister now. A voice alone was easily lost. Every voice lost was another small death of the song, and at this rate she could see only full silence ahead. Her only hope was to gather every last note left and hope it was enough.

 

_This is the truth: I didn't think they were people, too. They had too many eyes. Their voices were like the shrieking and scratchy wails of the damned. They had no fingers, and their mouths—their mouths—_

 

The small party turned the corner, coming face to face with the lurking terror for the first time. It was tall and lanky, its skin pale, but opaque. It wore some sort of garments over its torso and strange jewelry over its eyes. Only two of its limbs touched the ground, and it had but four total. A tuft of orange fur grew from its head.

It had two eyes. Its limbs had been split and broken at their ends and were stiff and somehow wrong along their lengths. Its mouth was a small slit in an unexpected direction, and it did not sing. _It did not sing_.

It—everything about it, from sound to sight to smell—was obviously, entirely monstrous.

 

_I have nothing in my defense but the truth: I thought they were monsters._

**Author's Note:**

> Content warning for: attempted genocide, child death, and mass murder.


End file.
